Denver Association of Family Child Care

Avoiding Power Struggles with Children

Sep 24, 2000

Power struggles prevent children from becoming healthy, fulfilled, whole people. They prevent those involved from achieving cooperative and intimate personal relationships.

At about age two, children begin to express their need to be their own person. That's when the struggles begin. The primary issue in power struggles is control and the primary emotion is anger. Those studying children's behavior have found that children adopt mistaken goals as a rationale for misbehaving. One mistaken goal is that children feel that they belong only when they are winning, or at least when they don't let others win. The true goal of all behavior is to find a sense of belonging and significance. Children sometimes adopt mistaken goals that they believe will help them achieve that sense of belonging and significance.

Children who feel powerless often will seek to gain power by hurting others when they feel hurt. Examples of revenge at age two or three may be talking back and spilling food. Revenge at 16 or 17 may look like drug and alcohol abuse, pregnancy, failure, running away and suicide.

If parents know that the goal of misbehavior is power, they can take effective actions to help their children. According to Kagan Sims, a Redirecting Children's Behavior Instructor for the International Network for Children and Families, the first step to positively deal with power struggles is to side-step -- neither fight nor give in. Decide what you will do, not what you will try to make your child do. Act kindly but firmly.

After side-stepping, the next step is to give choices, not orders. When giving children choices, parents must be sure that all choices are acceptable and that they aren't so narrow that the child senses no freedom at all. Choices should not represent a punishment as one alternative. For example, a parent tells a child, "You may either pick up the toys or take a time-out". Taking a time-out creates fear and intimidation instead of empowerment.

In the middle of a power struggle, parents can ask themselves how they can give their child more power in the situation. One mother asked herself this question when battling with her son about buckling his seat belt. Her solution was to make him responsible to see that everyone in the car was safely secured.

Power struggles often feel like someone has to win and someone has to lose. A win-win solution is when each party comes away feeling like they got what they wanted. Getting to win-win takes negotiation. Parents can assist their children by responding to their demands, "That sounds like a good way for you to win. And I want you to win. But I want to win, too. Can you think of a solution that works for both of us?"

Parents often feel that their authority is being questioned when children say no. It is best to hear a child's NO as a disagreement rather than a disrespectful response. Teach children to say NO respectfully and appropriately. Keep in mind that you want them to say NO when faced with peer pressure and inappropriate situations.

Everyone wants to feel powerful. Our children are not exempt from these feelings, so the more we can do to give them appropriate ways to feel powerful, the fewer power struggles we will have with them.

?¿½ Colorado State University Cooperative Extension. 1995-1999.
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